Thanksgiving feasting is done - on to Chanuka! We hope you can make it to our Chanuka celebration on Thursday, December 6 at 7pm! As usual, we will be enjoying home baked latkes, collecting gifts for Matanot Libenu (Fran Rosenfeld's gifts from the Heart), and having our annual gift exchange. To our traditional activities, this year we are adding poetry. Please either compose your own poem on the theme of light or find words written by others to share during our celebration.

Here is a poem to inspire you to write or find something better:
   To show off their might
   The Assyrians wanted to fight
   Judah the Hammer said "NO!"
   And defeated the foe
   And that's why we kindle eight lights

If you can contribute latkes to our celebration or if you can volunteer to setup or cleanup, please let Karen Pelmont know - 818-635-9996. If you wish to participate in the gift exchange, we suggest you bring a wrapped gift with a value of around $15, but if the gift exchange is not to your liking, please come anyway - there will be other activities to participate in and enjoy.

In honor of great Jewish cooks (there have been so many!) we tell of Evelyn Rose, 1925-2003, who was the first woman commissioner at the British Meat and Livestock Commission, and was made an MBE* in 1989. She was also an honorary life fellow of the Institute of Home Economics, and a former chair of the National Guild of Food Writers. Rose wrote a weekly food column for the Jewish Chronicle from 1963 (never missing an issue) and wrote a food column for the wine magazine Decanter. Her magnum opus on Jewish cuisine, the Complete International Jewish Cookbook, was published in 1976, and has been revised three times since, most recently in 2011.
 
Her obituary in The Guardian described her singular accomplishment as the melding of "contemporary cooking with Jewish dietary laws, regulations that not only prohibit the use of pig meat and shellfish, but also the mixing of dairy products with meat". Evelyn Rose was also "highly aware of the changes in culinary trends, particularly the move away from the fatty foods so typical of traditional Jewish cooking ... her modern, health-conscious recipes exemplified the changes that had taken place over her long career."

Born in Manchester, Rose lived in the city all her life except for four years that she spent in the United States as an evacuee. During her time in the United States Rose worked as a secretary at the MGM studios in California. She was invited to audition for the lead role in National Velvet, which was won by Elizabeth Taylor.
Rose was an amazing and accomplished woman! 
​
*MBE is The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. It is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organizations, and public service outside the Civil service.

​It is with sadness that I write this email to inform you that Marsha Sheff, long-time Temple Ahavat Shalom member and Past President of the TAS Sisterhood (2003-2005) died yesterday, November 22, 2018 after a long illness. Marsha's funeral will be held on Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 10:00am at Mount Sinai, Simi Valley.

If you would like to send a tribute to Marsha's family please contact Mel Birken.

Upcoming Sisterhood events:

• Thursday, November 15, 7pm - Wine and Wisdom: Conversations with God, moderated by Rabbi Kalfus
• Saturday, November 17, 7:30pm - Jewish Women's Theater: The Accidental Activist
• Thursday, December 6, 7pm - Sisterhood Chanuka Party & gift exchange

We hope to see you at these events! For more information, see our website (www.tassisterhood.org)

Last month, 12 TAS Sisterhood members went to the WRJ-Pacific District convention in San Diego. The weekend was wonderful, filled with excellent speakers, workshops, services and entertainment. Special moments included watching our own Erika Barnathan and Jackie Zev being installed on the WRJ-PD Board, and a gathering of friends of our dear past president, Ellen A. Pollack, to raise a glass in her honor. But best of all was the camaraderie - sharing the weekend with TAS sisters drew us all closer together. WRJ-PD conventions only happen every other year, so you will have to wait until 2020 to go to the next one. It will be in Orange County, practically in our backyard, so it will be very affordable.

Featured Jewish Woman - Penina Moise (1797-1880)
Most synagogue attendees know that Debby Friedman (1951-2011) wrote many of the songs used in modern Jewish services. But long before Debby Friedman there was another Jewish women that made a big difference in Jewish liturgy. Penina Moise (1797-1880) is considered the first Jewish American woman to contribute to the worship service, writing 190 hymns for Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, S.C., a synagogue founded in 1749 and considered the birthplace of many ideas that later became important in the founding of the Reform movement. By 1932, the Reform Movement’s Union Hymnal still contained 13 of Moise’s hymns.

Growing up in the presence of a diverse, vital, and well-integrated Jewish community, Moise devoted herself to Jewish issues. Her work appeared in both the Jewish and general press. Her 1833 collection of poems, Fancy's Sketch Book, was the first by a Jewish American woman. Moise also wrote columns for newspapers throughout the United States. Her poetry covered a variety of topics, including current events, politics, local life, Judaism, Jewish rights, and Jewish ritual reform.

Thank you for supporting the TAS Sisterhood.

​Here are two dates to remember:
7pm Thursday, November 15
7:30pm Saturday, November 17

Being November, we are thankful that we have the opportunity to attend two great events. 

The first is called "Wine and Wisdom: Conversations with God (moderated by Rabbi Kalfus)." Bring your questions and curiosity, and we will see where the discussion leads us. This event is Thursday, Nov 15 (7pm) in the Social Hall. Click here for more information.

The second is Jewish Women's Theater at TAS. Jewish Women's Theater is an *amazing* readers' theater, often held in people's homes. Several TAS members saw JWT and were so impressed by this moving and powerful show, that they were motivated to bring it to TAS and share with the TAS community. It may be called Jewish Women's Theater, but men are welcome and would enjoy the performance. The show is Saturday, Nov 17 (7:30pm) at the Temple. Tickets are only $25, so it is very affordable. Bring your friends! Click here to view the flyer.

Remember that it is easy to find Sisterhood's upcoming events on our website: http://tassisterhood.org/upcoming-events.html (be sure to put ".org" - ".com" will take you to the website for the Temple Ahavat Shalom Sisterhood in Florida!) You can bookmark http://tassisterhood.org/upcoming-events.html for easy access to all our planned events.

We continue our series of incredible (and sometimes little known) Jewish women with the story of Phoebe Yates Pember, who was the first woman appointed as administrative matron (in 1862) to Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. This hospital had remarkable size of nearly 5000 beds during the Civil war and treated 76,000 patients. Pember was the fourth of six daughters born to a prosperous Jewish family of Charleston, South Carolina. Her husband had died of tuberculosis at the age of 36, and as an energetic supporter of the Confederacy, she welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the care of the wounded. Her reception was less than cordial, with one of the ward surgeons complaining to a friend in disgust that “one of them had come.” But with the support of the surgeon-in-chief, James McCaw (who later became Dean of the Medical College of Virginia), she was able to improve the food and care of the patients, ignoring the opposition and prejudice. Her biggest battle was for control over the most popular medication, whiskey. This commodity was costly and at $4 million, was 20% of the Army Medical Department’s appropriation in 1865. It was also a symbol of authority in the hospital and there was constant friction over its control between male and female contingents. To make matters worse, a few of the patients were contemptible malingerers. One day at the end of the war, one of them tried to force her to give him more whiskey. He called her an indecent name and grabbed her shoulder, but then beat a hasty retreat when he heard the click of a pistol she had concealed in her pocket. She was not very happy about having to ration the supply of alcohol, and as she wrote, “there were some doubts afloat as to whether the benefit conferred upon the patients by the use of stimulants counterbalanced the evil effects they produced on the surgeons”; as she described it, “when the patient was being made ready for an amputation, it was customary for the surgeon to match the patient drink for drink.”
We are thankful for powerful women like Phoebe Pember who made a difference!

And we are thankful for your support of the TAS Sisterhood.